The movie starts off with a seemingly giant spider climbing over a house…yeah we learn in a second that it’s only a model, but that’s still an image that does not bode well.

Monsters, demons, ghosts, exercised souls… clearly belongs in the horror category. But the mad cap insanity of director Tim Burton creates a truly bizarre comedy with a truly bizarre cast. And in the middle is our as average and boring as can be couple of ghosts played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin. They play a not exceedingly bright (not an acting stretch for Baldwin) but very likable (a major feat of acting for Baldwin) young couple in love who are taken out just a little too early in life.

Why does a madcap comedy make it so much higher on this list than other films which are arguably better done? Well once again the fear of death. This movie deals with the idea of what the afterlife is like. And it’s not a pleasant idea. It’s a perverse bureaucracy that has no sense or rhyme or reason. The only guide is a book that reads like technical instructions. It’s worse than oblivion or even Hell, because at least one is an end and the other is a least theoretically just. No this is all the little insanities of life taken to an exponential degree with seemingly none of the good parts carried over. It’s almost worse than anything Dante envisioned. And if this were accurate, the fear of death would be valid…thank God it’s not.

And of course I have to bring up this scene (even though Belafonte is a poor excuse for a human being)